Professor Finlay McCrae, has successfully completed the first ever endoscopy procedures using a dual high definition, endomicroscopy endoscope at Cabrini Hospital, Melbourne.

The endoscope features a high definition confocal endomicroscope designed and built by Australian biotechnology company Optiscan.

The endoscope combines the benefits of the latest high definition endoscopic camera (which provides crisper and clearer images for finding suspicious tissue) with high definition endomicroscopy, a technology that provides three dimensional cell level detail and images akin to those previously only available from biopsy.

“Optiscan is delighted with these results from our generation 2 endomicroscope” said CEO, Vicki Tutungi “it might be difficult for non-medico?s to appreciate the significance of this achievement but those that understand the limitations of current technology realise that with this new device patient care can be dramatically improved. We have already shown with our first generation technology, which has been on the market for 4 years, that when the microscope is used in a standard definition endoscope, a doctor can identify more disease by observing cellular detail in real-time – not days later, when the pathology lab has processed a biopsy. But the standard definition video does not easily reveal all of the possible areas that could be interrogated with the microscope, a limitation now solved by putting the latest miniature HD camera alongside the latest HD endomicroscope scanner.

This combination addresses the two key steps of an endoscopic examination – firstly to find suspicious tissue and then to identify exactly what it is and whether it should be biopsied or treated. Since we first introduced endomicroscopy, endoscopists have told us this combination would be their „dream endoscope? – with this achievement, ‘double HD’ is now a reality.”

Optiscan will now focus on building prototypes which will be placed in the hands of key opinion leaders around the world.